St Vincent Opens First Medical Marijuana Lounge

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St Vincent opens first medical marijuana lounge

KINGSTOWN – Minister of Agriculture Saboto Caesar is encouraging traditional growers of marijuana to apply for permits to plant the crop under the government’s medicinal cannabis regime.

“There have always been traditional cultivators. And first of all, I want to congratulate the traditional cultivators who have gone to the medicinal cannabis authority, and have received their licenses,” Caesar told iWitness News on Friday, at Canash Bay, where Greenhouse Café, a medical marijuana consumption lounge was opened at Coconut Grove.

At Friday’s event, three doctors prescribed medical marijuana products after consultations with patients.

Following the consultation, the Medical Cannabis Authority issued the patients a permit to buy medical ganja products for a year.

The patients could also fill their prescription at the dispensary at the venue and use the medical marijuana products at the lounge. iWitness News asked Caesar, who also has ministerial responsibility for Industry, what he would say to people who were traditionally involved in marijuana, and might have hard feelings about what is taking place at Greenhouse Café. iWitness News asked the minister to respond to the view that these growers had traditionally invested the time and taken all the risk to build the nation’s reputation for cannabis but other people are now benefiting under the legal regime.

“I am happy that you asked the question, because from time to time — and we see in newspapers — persons who are still arrested for possession of cannabis,” Caesar said.

He said that in those instances, he would ask himself and those positioned to advised him, whether the person had a licence to cultivate marijuana.

“Now, it’s something like about $500 or less now, probably $100 for a license as a traditional cultivator,” he said and urged traditional growers to obtain a license, even as he said he believes “about 80 per cent of the traditional cultivators already have licences… “And really and truly I want to use this opportunity to encourage traditional cultivators to go and register and get your licenses. I know that person sometimes have problems with lands — they don’t have adequate lands. Well, leave a report there. Let’s see how we can work together.”

A composite image of Greenhouse Café and some of the products available at its dispensary on Friday, May 6, 2022.

He, however, noted that building something like the facility in Canash where the medical marijuana cafe is located “costs a lot of money.

“A traditional cultivator may not have the money to do something like this. And what we are doing, we have witnessed already where, for example, traditional cultivators have formed themselves into cooperatives . . . ”

Caesar mentioned RASFARCO, a group of Rastafari, who have a memorandum of understanding with Green Lava, a medical marijuana company, that will buy about 20 per cent of what RASFARCO produces.

“Producing at the quality to be integrated into that system also is a hurdle and we have provided assistance and we will continue to provide assistance to these traditional cultivators and groups so that we can be fully integrated,” Caesar said.

He said he expects over the next two or three years “that we will witness a further integration of traditional cultivators as stakeholders in the cannabis value chain in St. Vincent and Grenadines.

(iWitness News)